


Dandelion

by TheHomestuckWhovian



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 19:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13957992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHomestuckWhovian/pseuds/TheHomestuckWhovian
Summary: Matt's sister was weird. But that was part of why he loved her so much.





	Dandelion

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on [this au](http://radioactivesupersonic.tumblr.com/post/171819828600/celestial-beingsguardians-au), specifically the part about Pidge. I hope you enjoy!

Matt had lived in the city all his life, but he grew up in the park only a few blocks from the apartment his parents had rented. His childhood was divided between school, the little apartment, and the warm sun and green grass of the park, climbing trees and blowing the fluffy tipped seeds from dandelions.

And, in a way, his sister had been as big of a part of his childhood as the park. She had always been there, in the park with her bare feet covered in soil and rooted in the grass like the little flowers and the mighty trees.

But she had also been there like the blades of grass that forced their way up in the cracks of the sidewalk, and the beautiful weeds and moss that broke their way through the concrete and reminded everyone that the city could never truly escape the green of nature, or simply keep it to that park. No matter where Matt went, there was that little girl, scowling at the burn of asphalt and looking at the technology inside stores with a wonderment that was easy to forget, that Matt never wanted to lose.

Not everyone could see her. Managers of stores and cars never spared her a glance, but Dad would pause and look her way when she passed them on the street, and Mom would nod to her when she passed as if giving her a respect she had earned.

In the holes in trees, at the park, Matt saw her squeezed unnaturally inside, fiddling with broken cell phones and forgotten earbuds and other little bits of lives that had broken or been left behind. Sometimes he showed her how to fix something, or how things worked, and she'd ooh and ah, and other times she didn't need his help at all, and it'd be his turn to stare in amazement as she showed him how quickly she learned.

She talked to him and his parents a lot. Told them about the others like her, tall and ancient and powerful. How she was supposed to be a sapling that grew into one of them.

She later admitted to his dad that she didn't want to be an ancient oak.

It was Dad that brought her home one day. Creeping charlie and dandelions were exchanged for glasses like Matt's and a pair of shoes that grew dirty from traveling everywhere. Suddenly, the people that had missed her on the street now saw her, recognized her as Katie Holt, acted as though she had always been there.

Sometimes, Matt forgot that she hadn't always been there. She had grown into the little crack in their family, a space that hadn't originally been there for her, but she had made her own and they had left there for her. A dandelion left unplucked. She had become a Holt, and if he let himself not think about it too hard, he could almost remember her growing up in their family instead of being that child in the park with her dirt covered feet and weeds and flowers in her hair and twisted around her arms. He could almost forget that she was something else and just remember her as someone ordinary.

There were little reminders though.

The flowers in the florist's shop tilted in her direction, as if trying to gain her attention and greet her, and the sturdy and tall, yet kind man behind the counter gave her a knowing smile as he guarded the store like a temple. The two talked amicably about things Matt didn't understand, and he guessed he never would.

When they passed by the graveyard and saw the kind-faced man with the black dogs on both sides of him, flanking him as he tended the graves, Matt noticed how she nodded respectfully but pulled closer to his side, as if warning the man not to push his luck. The man simply nodded back and waved, with seemingly no intention of disturbing their walk, and Matt noticed him talk to the crows as if they were old friends as they left the graveyard behind.

Their new neighbors moved in after a tornado destroyed their old home, and he occasionally found her visiting them, talking excitedly with a boy that looked so much like the children of the family but also older in a strange, unnatural way. As they talked, another boy poked at the fire in the fireplace and smiled at a blue idol on the mantle. He couldn't recall ever seeing them except when she visited, and he could never find that first boy in the new neighbors' family photos or see the boy at the fireplace in the building anywhere other than at a fireplace, keeping those beside it warm.

Katie Holt wasn't quite the ancient trees she once described to them, nor was she quite human like Matt and  ~~his~~ their parents, but Matt didn't care.

He didn't care because he watched as she sat with their dad and listened and laughed at the stories as they worked on a project together. He didn't care because she would sing with their mom in the kitchen while they did the dishes, their voices off-key yet filled with delight as they laughed and scrubbed. He didn't care because he remembered how, on his birthday, she hugged him like he was the most important person on Earth and told him she loved him.

Matt didn't care because she was his little sister, and maybe she was something different and powerful and strange, but she also loved peanut butter and computers and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and hated peanuts and anyone who tried to hurt this family that she had made her's and that had made her theirs in return.

She was his little sister and he was always going to be her big brother.


End file.
